They had gained on the Fitzgerald boat now and Izzy could see Bob at the helm. His wife, pale-faced and shrieking, was telling him in no uncertain terms to slow down. She was also holding on desperately to the remains of her windswept hair-do. When she realised they weren’t alone on the high seas, a look of relief passed over her face. Max slowed his speed and came in alongside. ‘Ahoy, there,’ he said jovially, ‘everything all right?’
Bob’s response was restricted to an I-can’t-see-what-all-the-fuss-is-about expression, but Dolly-Babe’s wide-eyed look of near-hysteria told a different story.
‘If the engine isn’t up to it, it’s best to take it slowly,’ Max advised. ‘It gets even rougher round the next headland.’
‘You see?’ shouted Dolly-Babe at her husband, who was wearing the look of a man who didn’t appreciate the helpful tip he was being given by somebody in a bigger boat than his. His weary face reminded Izzy of her father’s expression in the car whenever her mother had instructed him on how best to overtake. ‘I told you not to go so fast,’ continued Dolly-Babe. ‘I knew I was right and you were wrong.’ She turned back to Max, as if to say something else, but the combination of a strong swell of water beneath their boats and an increase of pressure from Bob’s hand on the throttle had her toppling backwards. She landed with an undignified bump on her skinny bottom and lost one of her high-heeled slip-on shoes. ‘Bleeding hell, Bob!’ she yelled, just managing to steady herself. ‘What the sweet Fanny Adams do you think you’re doing? I could have gone overboard.’
Something in Silent Bob’s eyes suggested this thought had occurred to him. And not just once.
‘Well, so long as you’re okay,’ Max said. He let out the throttle, turned the boat sharply away, sending up an arc of white spray, and went on ahead. Izzy noticed, though, that he was thoughtful enough not to leave too great a gap between the two boats.
‘He is all heart, is he not?’ said Theo, in her ear and above the noise of the engine.
‘Who, Max?’
‘Yes. He is so kind-hearted he would not dream of leaving them to the mercy of the sharks. You are beginning to look very pale. Are you going to be sick?’
They were beyond the headland that Max had warned Silent Bob about and the increase in the pitch and roll of the boat was causing Izzy’s stomach to reconsider lunch. ‘I hope not,’ she said, closing her eyes and mentally crossing her fingers.
From the terrace of Villa Anna, and with the benefit of a pair of binoculars he had found in Theo’s study, Mark saw two boats approaching. As they drew nearer he was able to make out Theo and his friends in the leading boat - Theo had his arm around a dark-haired girl, no surprises there — and in the other ... was that dreadful couple from the plane.
He kept the powerful glasses fixed on the two boats, swinging them from one to the other. He checked out Theo’s friends: a man with silver hair was doing all the hard work, probably Max Sinclair, and an attractive woman, his wife presumably, was sitting beside him smoothing back her auburn hair as the wind kept blowing it into her face. And behind them was the girl with Theo. She looked a lot younger than everyone else, in her mid-twenties, perhaps, and of them all seemed to be enjoying herself least. Perhaps she wasn’t appreciating the attentions of the pram-chaser sitting next to her, thought Mark wryly.
He watched the two boats battle their way into the shallow, more sheltered water of the bay, until at last they slowed their engines and dropped anchor. The silver-haired man was out first, followed swiftly by Theo who went to assist Silent Bob. They must all be mad, thought Mark, as he watched them chatting on the jetty. From the safety of the terrace, where he had spent most of the day working, he had seen the rapid change in the sea conditions as a strong wind had sprung up, and had wondered how much it would affect Theo and his friends’ homeward journey.
He went and sat in one of the chairs by the pool, which was in full sun. He stripped off his shirt and decided that he had finished work for the day. He was pleased with the amount he had got done. He had fully expected, given the dramatic upheaval in his routine, not to get anything of any worth written. Normally when he was working, he had to stick to a strict code of conduct; so ritualistic it was absurd. The first draft of a manuscript was always hand-written in blue ink — real ink from a fountain pen, never a biro. He used W.H. Smith A4 Jotter Pads, with a ruled left-hand margin, though he never wrote close up to it, he always had to leave a further half-inch space clear. There was no reason why he did this, he just had to do it. He put his written pages into black lever-arch files, never any other colour, and any notes he added to the pages once they’d reached the file had to be written in pencil, never pen. It went without saying that he had his collection of lucky pens and pencils. And sure, the next step was lunacy, when he’d be claiming he couldn’t work unless he was wearing his lucky boxers. He also had to have music playing in the background, especially when he was doing the final draft on his PC. For his last book he had listened constantly to Bruce Springsteen. He didn’t always hear the music, but he heard its absence keenly. It was a cheap brain-washing trick that never failed to fool his subconscious into getting down to work.
Here, though, sitting in Theo’s garden with only the cicadas for musical accompaniment, he had been a ritual down, and had had to crank up his brain as best he could. It would be a nice irony if, when he returned home, he was only able to write with the sound of a hundred-piece cicada orchestra playing for him. Fortunately he had already made a good start on the first draft of his latest novel —
Flashback Again
— so at least he had a shove of momentum behind him before he had started this morning.
Flashback Again
was his sixth novel, and was proving to be his most ambitious. There were times when he woke in the middle of the night convinced that the plot was unfeasible, convinced, too, that his run of luck was on the verge of ending. As irritating as these disturbed nights were, they were nothing compared to those he had once lived with. During his days as an alcoholic, he had been tormented with nightmares of the most ferocious realism. Nightmares that began with the same hypnotic feel to them but climaxed with a brutal and horrifying denouement that had him staggering to the nearest sink or loo. He rarely had anything in his stomach, other than alcohol, and he would vomit so violently that he coughed up blood. Unable to get back to sleep he often got dressed and prowled the streets, looking for something to obliterate the fear.
Writing had been Theo’s idea. He had put it to Mark when he had insisted that his friend stay with him in Athens after he was discharged from the clinic. They had been sitting in a taverna in Pláka, the old quarter that lay at the foot of the Acropolis, where quiet winding streets and balconies of fragrant jasmine made it an oasis of calm in a crazy city. Athens was robust, disorderly, a place of haphazard growth, where classical old and insolent new rubbed shoulders to create a stupendous disharmony.
‘We need to think seriously about what you are going to do next,’ Theo had said.
The statement, as true as it was, panicked Mark. In his fragile, vulnerable state, the here and now was all he could cope with. Anything more freaked him out. But he had known that Theo was right: he had to have a plan. He was all too aware of the danger in not having any structure to his days. Previously drugs and alcohol had filled the void in his life; now he had to find something new. If he didn’t, he might falter and screw up again.
‘I think you should invest your past in your future,’ Theo had continued.
‘Any suggestions?’
‘Yes. Write a book.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Why not? Despite the number of brain cells you must have destroyed, you are still highly intelligent and more than capable of writing a novel. You have plenty going on inside that head of yours to write at least half a dozen books.’
‘It takes more than intelligence. It takes creativity, discipline, and a hell of a lot of determination.’
‘You have all of those things, Mark. Think back to our college days when you wrote for those student magazines. Your stuff was far superior to anything else they carried. Think also of the discipline and determination you needed to keep up with the onerous task of feeding your addiction over the years. But that is all behind you. Now it is time for you to divert that energy and allow yourself to reach your full capacity.’
Of course, Theo had only been voicing what had been in Mark’s mind ever since he could remember. What big-headed student hadn’t imagined that he would produce a life-affirming work of fiction that would set the world alight with its magnificent prose and original line of thought? But it was only now as an adult, now that his head was clear for the first time, that he allowed himself to pursue what had previously been little more than pie in the sky.
Theo had been right on the button when he had said that Mark’s past was the key to his future. With his wealth of first-hand experience of fear, writing a psychological thriller had seemed the most natural step for him to take. Fear, after all, begets fear. And who better to play to the dark side of the imagination than somebody who had been there since he was a child?
He wrote his first book in less than nine months while he remained in Athens with Theo. Once or twice, in the early days of his recovery, when Theo needed to travel overseas Mark went with him. ‘Believe me, it is not that I don’t trust you,’ Theo had said, during a flight to Sydney where he was currently negotiating a deal to snap up some prime water-front properties in the harbour, ‘It is more a case of keeping an eye on my investment.’
‘Theo, you’re an obscenely rich, upper-class Greek suburbanite. What the hell kind of investment do you see in me?’
‘Ah, but one never knows how things will turn out. Maybe one day you will be the wealthy author and I the penniless Greek peasant. I would then call in my debt.’
‘You’re forgetting, we’re quits. I saved your rotten life and now you’ve saved mine. The debt’s already settled, and seeing as my life is infinitely more valuable than yours, I reckon you owe me.’
The ‘debt’ had been a long-standing joke between the pair, though its origins were not the least bit funny. In Durham, about a month after they had first met, Mark had been walking aimlessly about the town late one night, as he often did if he couldn’t sleep. He had walked along the towpath, down by the river, then headed for the cathedral. There was nobody about, probably because it was so damned cold: a bitter, bone-blasting wind was slicing straight through him, stinging his eyes, making them water. It had rained earlier, and the streets were wet and shining in the soft light cast from the lamps. He stood for a moment to admire the chunky no-nonsense Norman architecture of the cathedral, and to shelter from the worst of the wind. He was just cursing the lack of buttons on his second-hand greatcoat and blowing on his hands to warm them when he heard a scuffling sound, followed by a cry. He retraced his steps to where he thought the noise was coming from and peered into the shadowy gloom of a litter-strewn alleyway. There he saw two lads kicking the hell out of some poor bloke on the ground. The sickening thud of boot on bone galvanised him, as did the sight of the victim’s expensive shoes and clothes.
‘Hey, you two,’ he yelled, ‘anybody can work over a ponce like that. How about a real fight?’ He shrugged off his coat, threw it on top of a pile of overflowing bin-bags and cardboard boxes, and walked towards them. He must have looked a menacing sight — viciously dyed hair, Doc Martens and a snarl that would have threatened the hardiest mugger. ‘Come on, then,’ he challenged, ‘one at a time, or both together, it makes no odds to me.’ He raised his fists and they came at him. He had never approved of the expensive school his parents had sent him to, but now he was grateful for it, especially for the choice of sports on offer, which had included boxing. The first thug received a broken nose for his trouble and ran off. The second, however, was more determined and pulled a wide, jagged-edged knife on Mark. He dodged out of the way to begin with, as the blade flashed and swooped within inches of his face, but then he tripped, lost his balance and fell against the wall. It was a mistake his assailant leaped on, and in one swift movement the cold steel was thrust deep into his side, and was left there as the mugger hightailed it into the darkness. Reeling with pain, and disbelief that this was happening to him — it was a bloody high price to pay for a night of insomnia in anyone’s book! — he held his breath, drew out the knife and watched his blood flow through the grubby whiteness of his T-shirt and down his jeans. Clutching his side, he went over to the motionless figure lying on the ground in a filthy puddle. ‘You’d better not be dead after all the trouble I’ve just gone to,’ he muttered. But for all his bravado, he flinched at the bloodied mess that had been Theo’s face. Pretty boy no more. He bent down to feel for a pulse and nearly lost consciousness at the pain that ripped through him. He pressed his fingers to Theo’s neck, located a faint ticking, then, like the thieves before him, rifled through his pockets, knowing that if anyone would have what he needed it would be this flash git. He found what he was looking for and, pushing the clean, neatly folded handkerchief against his side, he got to his feet. He retrieved his coat from the pile of rubbish, covered Theo with it, then made his way to where he knew there was a phone box. He called for an ambulance and staggered back to the alleyway, shivering with cold and shock.
The ambulance soon arrived and Theo, still showing no real sign of life, was put on a stretcher. It was only when Mark dropped the blood-soaked handkerchief from his side, that the extent of his own injury was realised.
He was hailed as a hero by Theo and his family, as well as by the college authorities. Even his own parents, unused to lavishing praise on their youngest son, applauded his bravery.